How different this profound and sober Christian attitude is when compared with the superficial attitude of some non-Orthodox Christians today who think they are already “saved” and will not even undergo the judgment of all men, and therefore have nothing to fear in death. Such an attitude, very widespread among present-day Protestants, is actually not too far from the occult idea that death is not to be feared because there is no damnation; certainly, even though inadvertently, it has helped give rise to the latter attitude. Blessed Theophylactus of Bulgaria, in his 11th-century commentary on the Gospels, wrote of such ones: “Many deceive themselves with a vain hope; they think that they will receive the Kingdom of Heaven and will unite themselves to the choir of those reposing in the height of virtues, having exalted fancies of themselves in their hearts.... Many are called, because God calls many, indeed everyone; but few are chosen, few are saved, few are worthy of God’s choosing” (Commentary on Matt. 22:14).
The similarity between occult philosophy and the common Protestant view is perhaps the chief reason why the attempts of some Evangelical Protestants (see Bibliography) to criticize today’s “after-death” experiences from the point of view of “Biblical Christianity” has been so unsuccessful. These critics themselves have lost so much of the traditional Christian teaching on life after death, the aerial realm, and the activities and deceptions of demons, that their criticisms are often vague and arbitrary; and their discernment in this realm is often no better than that of the secular researchers and causes them also to be taken in by deceptive “Christian” or “Biblical” experiences in the aerial realm.
The true Christian attitude towards death is based upon an awareness of the critical differences between this life and the next. Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow has summed up the Scriptural and Patristic teaching on this point in these words: “Death is the boundary at which the time of struggles ends for man and the time of recompense begins, so that after death neither repentance nor correction of life is possible for us. Christ the Saviour expressed this truth in His parable of the rich man and Lazarus, from which it is clear that both the one and the other immediately after death received their recompense, and the rich man, no matter how much he was tormented in hell, could not be delivered from his sufferings through repentance (Luke 16:26).”57
Death, therefore, is precisely the reality that awakens one to the difference between this world and the next and inspires one to undertake the life of repentance and cleansing while this precious time is given to us. When St. Abba Dorotheus was asked by a certain brother why he spent his time carelessly in his cell, he replied: “Because you have not understood either the awaited repose or the future torment. If you knew them as you should, you would endure and not grow weak even though your cell should be filled with worms and you would be standing among them up to your neck.”58
Similarly, St. Seraphim of Sarov, in our own modern times, taught: “Oh, if only you could know what joy, what sweetness await the souls of the righteous in heaven, then you would be determined in this temporal life to endure any sorrow, persecution, and calumny with gratitude. If this very cell of ours were full of worms, and if these worms were to eat our flesh throughout our whole temporal life, then with utmost desire we should consent to it, only not to be deprived of that heavenly joy which God has prepared for those who love Him.”59
The fearlessness of occultists and Protestants alike before death is the direct result of their lack of awareness of what awaits them in the future life and of what can be done now to prepare for it. For this reason, true experiences or visions of life after death generally have the effect of shaking one to the depths of one’s being and (if one has not been leading a zealous Christian life) of changing his whole life to make preparation for the life to come. When St. Athanasius of the Kiev Caves died and came back to life after two days, his fellow monks “were terrified seeing him come back to life; then they began to ask how he had come back to life, and what he had seen and heard while he had been apart from the body. To all questions he answered only with the words: ‘Save yourselves!’ And when the brethren insistently asked him to tell them something profitable, he gave as his testament to them obedience and ceaseless repentance. Right after this Athanasius closed himself up in a cave, remained in it without leaving for twelve years, spending day and night in unceasing tears, eating a little bread and water every other day, and conversing with no one during all this time. When the hour of his death came, he repeated to the assembled brethren his instruction on obedience and repentance, and died with peace in the Lord.”60
Similarly, in the West, Venerable Bede relates how the man of Northumbria, after being dead one whole night, came back to life and said: “I have truly risen from the grasp of death, and I am allowed to live among men again. But henceforth I must not live as I used to, and must adopt a very different way of life.” He gave away all his possessions and retired to a monastery. Later he related that he had seen both heaven and hell, but “this man of God would not discuss these and other things that he had seen with any apathetic or careless- living people, but only with those who were haunted by fear of punishment or gladdened by the hope of eternal joys, and were willing to take his words to heart and grow in holiness.”61
Even in our own modern times, the author of “Unbelievable for Many” was so shaken by his true experience of the other world that he entirely changed his life, became a monk, and wrote his account of his experiences in order to awaken others like himself who were living in the false security of unbelief about the next life.
Such experiences are numerous in Lives of Saints and other Orthodox sources, and they stand in sharp contrast to the experiences of people today who have seen “heaven” and the “other world” and yet remain in the false security that they are already “prepared” for life after death and that death itself is nothing to be feared.
The place of the remembrance of death in Christian life may be seen in the manual of Christian struggle, The Ladder of St. John (whose Sixth Step is devoted specifically to this): “As of all foods bread is the most essential, so the thought of death is the most necessary of all works.... It is impossible to spend
58
Abba Dorotheus,
59
60
As related by Bishop Ignatius, vol. III, p. 129; see his Life in the